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Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed's "Flight to Canada" Author(S): Richard Walsh Reviewed Work(S): Source: Journal of American Studies, Vol

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Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed's This is a repository copy of ‘A Man’s Story Is His Gris-Gris’ : Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/52480/ Version: Published Version Article: Walsh, R orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-6916 (1993) ‘A Man’s Story Is His Gris-Gris’ : Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. Journal of American Studies. pp. 57-71. ISSN 1469-5154 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ "A Man's Story Is His Gris-Gris": Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed's "Flight to Canada" Author(s): Richard Walsh Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Apr., 1993), pp. 57-71 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for American Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40464077 . Accessed: 31/10/2012 11:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of American Studies. http://www.jstor.org "A Man's Storyis His Gris- Gris": CulturalSlavery, Literary Emancipationand Ishmael Reed's Vlight to Canada RICHARD WALSH Withthe emergenceof black nationalismin the late sixties,the delineation of a new black aestheticbecame an urgentissue : it was firstand most persistentlyraised by Hoyt Fuller in NegroDigest, and soon became the staple of radical black little magazines across America. In 1971, the appearanceof a collectionof essaysentitled The Black Aestheticand edited by Addison Gayle broughtsome coherenceto the debate, and sanctified its assumptions.1In his own contributionsto that book, Gayle recorded the passing of the mythof the Americanmelting pot and the consequent need to repudiate assimilationism.He argued that black nationalism implied the development of a black aesthetic in direct opposition to prevailing aesthetic criteria, in which white cultural concerns were privileged under a guise of "universalism": this bogus universalism actuallydepended upon themarginalization of blackperspectives and black writersby a white literaryestablishment. Such observationsestablished the need for a new black aesthetic, and prescriptionsfor its form proliferated.These blueprintswere handed down at a seriesof conferences at which black writerspast and presentstood trialagainst the new criteria. The emergentconsensus was forwriting that directly recreated the black experienceout of whichit arose; thatfound its stylein theforms of "black - folk expression"; that was sociallyprogressive in effect according to a very literal concept of functionalliterature; that addressed itselfto the common readership of black people; and that assiduously cultivated positive black characters. Richard Walsh is Keasbey Research Fellow in American Studies, Selwyn College, Cambridge CB3 9DQ, England. 1 Addison Gayle, Jr., ed., The Black Aesthetic(Garden City: Doubleday, 1971). Journalof AmericanStudies, 27 (1993), 1, 57-71 © 1993 Cambridge UniversityPress 58 RichardWalsh Ishmael Reed was one of the few young black writerswilling to confrontthis prescriptiveagenda, dismissingit as a "goon squad "2 aesthetic, andexplicitly repudiating it in hisown writing. While sharing the oppositionof the black aestheticcritics tp the hegemonyof white culture,he consideredtheir narrow prescriptions to consolidatethe marginalizationofblack writing as simplyprotest literature. Such a rigidly definedblack aesthetic,he argued,merely confirmed the whiteliberal establishment'ssub-literary expectations of Afro- American writing. Black writingshould be freeto exploreits own culturalsources and defineits own forms,that act itselfbeing the affirmation of a blackaesthetic. Reed consequentlydrew criticism from Gayle forthe supposedfrivolity and dangerousmythologÌ2Ìng of his novels. He was condemnedby both Gayle and HoustonBaker for his negative,satirical treatment of black charactersother than the universallyreviled 'Uncle Tom' figure.Most fundamentally,his rejectionof realismwas stigmatizedas escapismand a neglectof his responsibilityto provide for readeridentification in a common ground of black experience.But more significantly,these considerationsalso set Reed againstAmiri Baraka, the literaryhero of black nationalismand one of its most outspokentheorists ; and when Baraka himselfcame to repudiatenationalism, his criticismof Reed becameeven more implacable.To Baraka,whose conceptof a black aesthetichad now been recastin revolutionarysocialist terms with class ratherthan race defining the arena of conflict,Reed's neglectof theissue of capitalistexploitation and his individualiststance revealed him as a middle-classcapitulationist, an archetypalUncle Tom. The confrontationbetween Reed and his black critics was first played out in his earlynovel YellowBack Radio Broke-Down (1969). Its cowboyhero Loop Garoo is confrontedby Bo Shmoand his"neo-social realist gang," who chargethat "your work is a blur and a doodle." Loop's reply encapsulatesReed's rebellionagainst the constraintsupon the Afro- Americanliterary tradition: "What's yourbeef with me Bo Shmo,what if I writecircuses? No one saysa novel has to be one thing.It can be anythingit wantsto be, a vaudevilleshow, the six o'clock news, the "3 mumblingsof wild men saddledby demons. The peculiarinterest of Flightto Canada among Reed's novels is itsreturn to thesubject matter of the archetypeof Afro-Americanfiction, the slave narrative.He had 2 " " When State Magicians Fail : An Interviewwith Ishmael Reed, Journalof Black Poetry, 1 (Summer/Fall 1969), 75. 3 YellowBack Radio Broke-Down(1969; New York: Atheneum, 1988), 36. IshmaelReed9 s Flight to Canada 59 renouncedthe conventionsof this formin his firstnovel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers(1967), "a parody of the confessional mode which is the fundamental,undergirding convention of Afro-American narrative."4 His refusalof this traditionopened the way for Reed to elaborate an alternativein his subsequentnovels, the "Voodoo aesthetic"he advanced as a more authenticmodel of the Afro-American cultural heritage. This project extended through YellowBack Radio Broke-Down,Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and TheLast Days ofLouisiana Red (1974), untilin Flightto Canada he was able to returnand reappropriatethe slave narrativeon his own terms.Reed's slave narrativedoes not follow the simplelinear form, that of the protagonist'sdifficult progress towards freedomfrom a condition of slavery,by which the genre is conventionallystructured. Rather, he divides his attentionbetween the experiencesof two principalcharacters : the fugitiveQuickskill, and Uncle Robin, the slave who remainsbehind on the master'splantation (in accordance with the model of UncleTom's Cabin).He uses thisopposition to develop a two-prongedargument about the true nature of emancipation and the means by which it is to be obtained,and this argumentis enrichedby a metaphoricalinterpretation of slaverywhich anchors it firmlyto a contemporaryframe of reference. This metaphoricaldimension, the focus of the narrativeattention upon the presentas much as on the period of the action, is proclaimedby one of the book's most pervasive comic devices, the use of anachronism.It is alreadyimplicit in the novel's punningtitle, and combinestwo distinct aspects: it createsa contemporaryatmosphere through the casual use of props such as jumbo jets, telephones,satellite television, Time magazine, New York Reviewof Books, and all the paraphernaliaof contemporary civilization;it also involves a fundamentaldisregard for the sequence of historicalevents. Set in the Civil War period, the novel freelyjuxtaposes ante-bellumfigures such as Edgar Allan Poe, the Marquis de Sade, General Lafayetteand Captain Kidd with referencesto post-warcultural phenomenasuch as BuffaloBill's Wild West Show and RaddiffeCollege, and figureslike T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. This disruptionserves both to negate the sense of historyas a linearevolution, a measureof progress, and to underminethe war's conventionalsignificance as a watershedin Afro-American history. His basic strategyis an equation betweenthe Civil War itselfand the civil unrestof the 1960s, a parallel impressionistically caughtin the image of Lincoln's assassinationbeing endlesslyreplayed in 4 " ' ' the Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Blackness of Blackness : A Critique
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